Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who started the uproar by denouncing the ships entry into the Mediterranean, turned silent.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who reportedly had wanted to ignore the Iranian ships, tried to calm the frenzy Lieberman had sat off.
“It’s a provocation and I don’t like it,” Barak said. “But I don’t think anyone should be worried about it. If hey were bringing rockets or weapons or explosives to Hamas or Hezbollah, we would have probably acted against them. But they are just coming—with [the normal complement of] weapons on them—with cadets, naval cadets, to visit a Syrian port.”
The Voice of Israel radio said Israel had received a report when the ships sailed through the Suez Canal saying the two vessels carried no arms shipments for Hamas or Hezbollah and had only the normal weapons found aboard such ships. The radio did not say whom the reports came from, but in the context it almost certainly came from the Egyptian government, which sends people on board ships transiting the canal.
Meanwhile, some in Iran tried to make the most out of the shouting from Lieberman. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, the chief of logistics, said the Israeli reaction showed the Israelis were fearful of Iran’s military might.
But Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian Navy who was aboard one of he vessels docked in Syria, had an entirely different view. He said the hue and cry raised by Lieberman was intended to cause tension with the goal of promoting an agenda of Iranophobia. “It is usually the Zionist regime that exaggerates these things in order to create tension,” he said.
The ships are the small 1,500-ton frigate Alvand and the 33,000-ton supply ship Kharg, both of which were built in Britain and bought by Iran in the 1970s before the revolution.